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Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, expects the bipartisan immigration reform proposal, which includes a path to citizenship, will end up costing taxpayers more overtime than the trillion-dollar calculations he testified to during debate over the 2007 immigration reform bill.

“[The proposal] seems to be virtually identical to the 2007 bill and would be extremely costly to the U.S. taxpayers,” Rector told The Daily Caller in a Wednesday interview. “Granting amnesty or legal status to illegals will generate costs in Medicare and Social Security alone of $2.5 trillion above any taxes paid in.”

According to Rector, the majority of the undocumented immigrants who would eventually be legalized by the legislation are largely uneducated, and therefore more likely to be dependent on government assistance. Fifty to 60 percent of the new immigrants are high school dropouts, and 75-80 percent have no more than a high school degree.